A Mt. Pleasant man who forced a woman to drive him to retrieve a gun and then ordered her to kill him or be killed before she ultimately escaped and called for help was sentenced to more than a dozen years in prison last week.
Daryan Josef Stallcup, 46, pleaded guilty in federal court in January to unlawful imprisonment, which is an assimilated state court charge and a 15-year felony.
United States District Judge Thomas L. Ludington handed him a 151 month sentence last month also imposed two years of supervised release for Stallcup, who has previous convictions including breaking and entering, writing bad checks, drunk driving and car theft according to federal records.
Stallcup was with the victim in a car within the boundaries of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Reservation when the 46-year-old first screamed at her to kill him before he physically assaulted her and forced her to drive him to his home, according to court documents.
He went inside, came out with a handgun, then told the woman she had until he finished smoking a cigarette to decide: she could kill Stallcup or he would kill her.
Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Police officers, who investigated and sought charges in the Nov. 12, 2017 incident, said the victim escaped only after tossing the gun, out of a car window.
“She was told that she needed to decide if she was going to shoot and kill him or if he would have to kill her and then kill himself,” said Tribal Officer Phil Mata in an affidavit supporting the charges. “She believed that she would be murdered if she didn’t act, so she threw the pistol out of the window.”
Mata said Stallcup then put the car, which was on East Valley Road near the Pohlcat Golf Course, in park and slapped the woman.
She honked the horn hoping to get the attention of someone, ran from the car and pounded on the door of a nearby house, and then hid in a wooded area until police arrived.
Isabella sheriff’s Deputy Todd Graham later found the pistol – a stolen .38 caliber – along the road.
“The gun was fully loaded and the hammer was cocked back allowing the revolver to be fired easily,” Mata said in court documents.
Stallcup, who was charged in federal court because he is Native American, was originally accused of assault with intent to murder, being a felon in possession of a firearm and brandishing a firearm while committing a crime.
Earlier that day Stallcup had told his wife, who was not the woman in the car he’s accused of assaulting, that he was considering suicide, according to Isabella Central Dispatch records.